


Composed of Nows

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Holidays, Labor Day, Romance, Summer, end of summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 11:43:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15885354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: “He comes awake to the sound of her returning.”





	Composed of Nows

**Author's Note:**

> Set the Labor Day after Always (4 x 23). A very brief moment.

 

Forever – is composed of Nows –

‘Tis not a different time –

Except for Infiniteness –

And Latitude of Home –

—Emily Dickinson 

* * *

 

 

 

He comes awake to the sound of her returning. Not the sound. She’s better than catlike when she wants to be, so it’s something else that rouses him. Presence after absence, and he waits for the melancholy of that to descend. The melancholy of having missed the moment when he might have coaxed her back to him.

He knows when she leaves. A room. The loft. Her side of the bed. He almost always knows immediately, and it feels like a failure when he doesn’t. He didn’t know this time, and he waits for the hint of blue that usually follows. 

It’s slow in coming. Staved off, maybe, by the pleasure in watching her mostly through his lashes. He’s only barely awake, and she’s hugging the edge of the room. She’s headed for the shower and taking the long way around.

“I’m awake,” he murmurs from the depths of the bed.

The pillows and the tangle of sheet and blanket swallow most of the sound, but she hears. She freezes, then pivots on the ball of one foot. It’s a funny little moment. Cartoonish, courtesy of the bright, solid colors of her running clothes and the exaggerated, sheepish grin she flashes his way.

“Sorry,” she stage whispers. She races a few quick steps on tip toe toward the alcove outside the _en suite._ “It’s early. Go back—”

“Mmm, no.” He throws off the covers. He hauls his legs off the bed and finds his feet. “Not back.”

He staggers toward her, but she darts away. She dissolves into a slightly cross laugh and the closing of a door that he ignores. He shoulders his way into the bathroom.

“Castle.” Her voice comes from the depths of the close-fitting tank top she’s peeling up and off. “I have to shower.”

She emerges scowling. She brandishes the sweat-soaked shirt like a warning flag, for all the good it does.

“I can help with that.” He bats her arm aside and reaches for the naked, slick curve of her waist above the snug line of her running tights.

“No, you cannot.” She slips around him, as agile and awake as he is stumbling and sluggish with sleep. She kicks off one shoe, then the other, and skims off her socks with a dizzying combination of fingers and toes. “This is a business shower.”

“Business,” he repeats, groping for an idea. A joke, but something else, too. Something—a point of information—that’s been trying to kick loose in the fog of his mind.“Labor. For Labor Day.”

“Labor Day.” She pauses with her thumbs hooked beneath her waistband. With one hip cocked, preparatory to shimmying out of the clinging fabric. She meets his eyes in the mirror. “Summer’s over.”

He nods. He waits for the melancholy to descend and finds that’s an old habit. The pain of last year travels up and out of his mind. The year before that and the year before that. He waits for the hint of blue, but it turns out they’re just stops on the way to where he is now. In this moment.

“Do you get sad?” Curious. That’s one facet of where he is now. “You’re a summer person.” Certain and uncertain. A little cocky about who she is, and a little eager for her to knock him down about it. That’s another facet or two.

She studies him. His reflection, and he registers that it’s a little bolder than what she’ll allow herself most of the time. He wonders if it’s the safety of a gaze once removed, or if it’s the gift of time. If it’s the gold of summer stretching out behind them and the tantalizing silver-gray of fall to come. All the seasons to come.

“A summer person?” She frowns at the idea. “Not really.”

He’s about to insist. Her skin is here-and-now evidence, toasted a delicious brown as it is. His memory calls up her long fingers sliding between his as she pulls him away from home, calling over her shoulder that it’s not even dark yet. He’s about to argue, but she says it again.

“Not really.”

She ducks her head. She bends at the waist and maybe makes more of a production of stripping off the last layer than she needs to. She occupies herself with the stage business of untangling the tie from her hair and dragging vigorous fingers through it.

But in the end, she stands tall. She stands with shoulders back and finds his eyes again. In the mirror. In real time. She pivots and makes a swift 180. She steps into his body, heedless of sweat and salt and everything. She winds her arms around his neck presses right up against him.

“I’m more of a ‘Now’ person.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The confluence of Labor Day and a friend mentioning this  poem caused this to well up this morning, and then it wouldn’t be quiet. 


End file.
